0000000000347415
AUTHOR
Reyes Mestre-barberá
An agency approach to debt maturity of unlisted and listed firms in the European setting
Abstract This study analyses the debt maturity of two groups of companies – unlisted and listed – throughout the period 2005–2013. The research takes an agency costs approach to explore the determinants of firms' debt maturity structure for a set of five countries, chosen for being representative of the European Union (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom). Agency costs, as well as institutional and macroeconomic factors, turn out to be decisive in explaining firms’ financial policies regarding debt maturity, during the economic crisis that started in 2007–2008. Our findings indicate that contracting costs had a greater impact on unlisted firms during the post-crisis subperi…
The regulatory environment and financial constraints of private firms in the European Union
This study analyzes the influence of the institutional environment on firms' capital structure in the European Union (EU). Unlike other research, we focus on private firms and include data from all EU countries from 2010 to 2018. We split the sample into groups of small and large firms, which we consider financially constrained and unconstrained, respectively. Throughout the study, we posit that institutional effects on financing policies vary with size, with the effects being greater for constrained firms as they face more financing frictions. We also run regression models controlling for firm-level characteristics and relevant macroeconomic factors. Our findings reveal that a high-quality…
Tax effect on Spanish SME optimum debt maturity structure
Abstract This paper analyzes the influence of the tax effect on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) debt maturity structure. This study builds a dynamic adjustment model which endogenizes optimum structure and assumes the existence of adjustment costs. Using Spanish data, the model is estimated using a system-GMM regression to a complete panel (11,028 firms) covering 1997–2004. SMEs adjust to their target at a speed of about 37% annually, the equivalent of employing about 20 months to cover only half of the existing gap. This rate is lower than those reported in other similar papers studying large companies with publicly tradable equity.
New Evidence of the Tax Effect on SME Optimum Debt Maturity Structure
This paper analyzes the influence the tax effect has on optimum SME debt maturity structure. Unlike previous research, this study builds a dynamic adjustment model which endogenizes optimum structure and assumes the existence of adjustment costs. The model is then estimated by applying a system-GMM regression to a complete data panel (12,250 firms) covering the period dating from 1997 to 2004. SMEs adjust to their target at a speed of 35%, which is the equivalent of employing around 20 months to cover only half of the existing gap. This rate is lower than those obtained in other similar papers studying large companies with publicly tradeable equity.
On the Relevance of Agency Conflicts in SME Debt Maturity Structure
Previous theoretical research asserts that an optimal policy of debt maturity structure mitigates the various agency conflicts that arise through debt contracts. We test this hypothesis on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), which are very sensitive to agency problems. Such problems mainly arise between owners and debt providers, due to SMEs recording high growth and having few fixed assets and informational asymmetry. We provide evidence on the relevant effect of underinvestment, asset substitution, and overinvestment problems on SME debt structure. Results appear to be robust to both the endogeneity problem of explanatory variables and the censored dependent variable.